


"That's the real me" - Arthur through the looking glass

by Mama_Nihil



Series: Diamonds and Curls [4]
Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Arthur is a poet, Arthur remembers, Attempt at Seduction, Bathroom Scene, F/M, Flashbacks, How did we end up here?, and dancing on the car scene, but don't worry, narrated by HIM, philosophical, police officers scene, randall scene, she had to write it sooner or later, there will be purple prose, this is a research article, train scene, well crap, with a very big -ish added
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:48:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22292839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mama_Nihil/pseuds/Mama_Nihil
Summary: Written by Harleen Quinzel, PhD. Published 15 October 1991 inThe Journal of Experimental Literary Ethnographyas part of their “Tales from the field” genre.This is it, folks: Joker's chance to tell his side of the story, and here to back him up is none other but the daughter of Professor Emeritus Francis Quinzel.It's also a fucking trip.
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Harleen Quinzel, Joker/Harley Quinn
Series: Diamonds and Curls [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561540
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	1. Introduction

The journal knew this was a gamble. For one, I am not a tenured researcher. Second, this thing is a hybrid: not quite a scientific work and not quite a slavering gossip column. Mostly it is a mood piece, which is the point of the Tales from the Field genre, but this particular tale is far from their usual fare. The journal may be experimental, a burial ground for flights of fancy too extreme to publish anywhere else, but still. They took a chance with me, because the contents of this article are not even strictly true. Not if you consider the truth whole and nothing but. But through lies we can tell a kind of truth, and where else would that epistemology be more fitting than in a literary journal?

This is to be seen as a counterargument to Professor Crane’s book – which, granted, has been tainted somewhat by recent events. Not everyone who took his word will do so any longer. So fuck him, pardon my French. The foremost authority on me is me. I would also argue that I am the foremost authority on Joker. Why? Because we are one.

So what is my target group? Some will say it is my father, others my old workplace. Some will say the whole world – that my gun is pointed at the official image, that I want to set the record straight. Some will say it’s a love letter to _him_. Well, can they not all be true? Why do you want to choose sides? Scientists bury themselves in trenches to defend their stupid opinions. One claims that identity is an unchanging core, another that it is fluid. Why can it not be both? Why are we so afraid to agree with part of an argument and bits of another? Why do we cling to a simple, single view of the world? Why is everyone so enamored of their monomania?

I write this because it is all I can do. It is an extension of my dark gift. I heal not only myself with it but him. Perhaps even you, dear reader.

I wanted to write it like a classic study, way back when that was still an option. Remnants of that thinking will cling to the finished product. But “wanted” is the wrong word. I did not want to write according to the standards of my trade. I have always confused what I want with what is socially acceptable, and I know I am not the only one. In contrast, I am among the precious few who took that fake want and exposed it for what it was.

But for so long I _thought_ I wanted. I thought no one would take me seriously if I did not follow the established practice. I thought I would not take myself seriously, that I could not believe my own insights if I did not mold them to a stale old formula to make brand new ideas crack and groan with force-fed age. I clung to the safety of ancient knowledge, of following a known form. I imagined it was the only way to reveal a core of truth.

But my path to the core went through fire and blood, destruction and love. By seeing myself, I could see him. But we will get to that in the method section. Now let me take you by the hand and lead you through the landscape that was once Arthur Fleck.

It all begins with a sheet of glass.


	2. Background

Arthur knew Joker long before he emerged. He also had no idea who he was.

How do you not know what is going on inside of you?

There was just a vague outline, a smudge of green in his dreams, a force that made him move, a tic. It peered at him from mirrors when he was not looking – just a hunch, a movement at the corner of his eye, or a grin through the film of moisture, distorted and foggy – but when he looked, when he blinked the tears away, there was nothing there. Joker knew to keep just out of sight.

He lived in a cage of sorts, behind bullet-proof glass. He tried to come through so many times. Bang. Bang. Bang. It was not _his_ head that took the shock of it. 

He showed his face, and sometimes Arthur would allow himself to be hypnotized. He would not choose these moments. They would descend on him like carrion birds. A flicker of recognition as he made himself up, a wink from the other side, slightly out of focus. A smile that was not his, that caught him in a moment of weakness.

Glass shows us our true selves, or that is what we believe. Mirrors, windows, camera lenses, screens. We are refracted and reflected, deflected and dissected, and what comes out on the other side has the sheen of truth. Reversed, augmented, distorted, but still. It is an exact copy, is it not?

Arthur Fleck trusted his reflection, he had to. How else could he put on his face? And that was the most important thing to him back then. Playing the son, playing the artist. Clown, freak, comedian. You all know the story. I know backgrounds are meant to state the obvious and then find some poor sucker who has _proved_ it, so you can _back it up_. Otherwise it is pure conjecture, even if you say the Earth is round. Well, I will not bore you with references to books or newspapers you probably already have clippings from, you twisted fucks. I will rely on your prior knowledge. I will only find the holes and fill them.

Such as, did you know how prominently trains featured in his previous life? Great rumbling beasts that sped through the tunnels of his mind, signals flicking from red to green like synapses in overdrive. They sped him into madness, those trains. They put him on the rails and there was no choosing.

Or did you know his path moved across mosaics of black and white? In the lobby of his apartment building, in the cinema bathroom, you could even argue the Murray Franklin show. Always the juxtaposition of darkness and light, of opposing forces, of the ultimate choice. He moved like a pawn for most of his life, just shuffling along one step after another, no fancy flights or pirouettes for Arthur Fleck the forgotten princeling. That was all for others, for those at the top. As a pawn, he was not even in the hierarchy.

But this is looking-glass land, and if you can say it, you can make it true.


	3. Method

So, yeah. We talked, and I looked. What other methods are there really?

His imaginings: he tried to write them, or show them, tried to force the images in his mind out through his fingers, through tendons and muscle with no talent for that kind of artistry. So I had to write them instead. Had to force them out another way. I straddled him on the bed and stroked his back, I held him through the night, I kissed his throat and eyelids. Unethical, you would say, if you knew the price he paid. But he gave his informed consent. He could withdraw that consent at any time without giving a reason. And the end justified the means.

I have changed the names of those who are not him. Not for anonymity, because you will still recognize them, but because it amuses me.

Too many quotes in this article, some will say. People who want the grave voice of the scientist to tell the tale, like a favorite uncle. People who wish to avoid the words of the participant, because they can never be as eloquent? Well, here is the thing: I do not give a fuck. You need to hear his voice. That is the whole point of this, and I am just the amplifier. Rest assured, my analysis will snake itself in there, but how can I prioritize my theorizing over his lived experience? Our voices are on a par in this. They sing in unison, they sometimes make harmonies and sometimes clash in dissonance. They express a kind of truth with snake-tongue duality. It is up to you to choose what to believe, which voice to foreground.

But know this: together we sing a better song than we do apart.


	4. Results: Train

_They’re coming._

_The world is moving around me, and my body shivers with terror. I feel them approach, but there’s nothing I can do. I’ve never tasted fear like this. Never felt it crawling on my skin. So many times, and it still feels like the first. As if it’s a living thing, an organism slithering up my legs and arms, devouring as it goes._

_I feel the thudding in the floor before I see their shapes invade my space. Their voices echo my convulsions – a hateful sound, nothing like the softness of Gwen, my queen, the one who left me here to face the wolves alone._

_I wanted to say goodbye. I wanted to touch. Crazy and dangerous, a longing we learn to suppress. But something made me want to._

_I’ve heard the stories, of course. Once it had a function. Primates picking nits, bonding – like music. But bonding is dangerous. It makes us do irrational things. I should have stopped it, that piece of music I heard when our eyes met, but it’s in me now, echoing, multiplying, giving birth to new strains. I’ll never be able to unhear it. I’ll never be able to keep those notes out of my own song._

_But it doesn’t matter. They’re coming. They’re here. They reach my side of the car and the world goes into a slow-motion spin. Stars wheel overhead as they handle me. It’s not painful – I don’t know physical pain, and so I don’t know what to call the sensation caused by their hands all over me. But I’m afraid, so very, very afraid._

_Touch._

_Touch that I didn’t allow._

_The first touch of my life was a punishment. Hands that wanted to disintegrate, to wipe out. My conscious nerves scream in agony, but I’m silent, unsure of whether this is pain or not. I soar above the carnage. My head is swirling with heat and sparks, and I don’t know what’s me and what’s the train screeching against rails. There’s anger down there, white-hot and boiling – not only in those men, but in the earth itself. It’s rising to the surface, and I’m here, powerless to leave. Trapped._

_As the tunnel whizzes past, my eyes lose focus. It’s all a grey-green blur. I’m lost. It’s hot, too hot. The air is trembling. My lungs. They’re ruined. I can’t get enough oxygen. Tears rise in my eyes as I scrabble for consciousness. I’m dying. My skin is covered in blood and grit and sweat, and the air can’t reach me. It’s not their kicks, it’s a long, slow suffocation, smoke and ashes. They can always claim innocence when it’s my own body that kills me._

_My mind is foggy, but I’m still conscious. Some small part of me clings to life, to air. There’s a coldness in my throat, as if something is moving inside it. Back and forth. Scraping at the tender mucosa. Wanting to scream, or to break free? You should never think you’re safe. That’s when they pounce. Something is happening. Up here, and down below. It’s all breaking apart, losing footholds. What was fitted together is dissolving. Illusions turn to ashes in the blaze._

_My last thought before the darkness takes me –_

_But there is no last thought. If there had been, it would have been a pair of hands that promised never to let me come to harm._

__

***

In his mind, he followed her. Gwen, her name was. His intended queen, his predestined betrayer. Did he give her that name because he knew – thought he knew – that even someone tied to him in bonds of matrimony would escape the only way she could, giving her heart to someone else? And yet here she was, an apparition to soothe in a moment of pain. She didn’t leave him in this car, with these murderous pawns. Instead she paused by the door and beckoned to him.

The white queen.

She saw his abandonment, his fear and frozen limbs, and she made the decision for him. He got up, he took his things or left them behind, it didn’t matter. She held the door for him, a topsy-turvy gesture through a mirror darkly, and they walked through to the other side. Safe. Alone. In a new world where pawns and talking flowers didn’t exist.

She turned to him, and as he was beaten in the other car, the car of reality that didn’t matter, she raised a hand to his neck and caressed it.

Do you understand? Do you? (Do I?) He wanted to be led. Because he didn’t know where to go. ( _Got nowhere else_.)

“What are you doing?” he asked, and she shook her head.

“I don’t know.” Her eyes dropped to his mouth, his grotesquely made up mouth meant to make children laugh, but her pupils gaped wide at the sight. As if something in that rusty dried-blood color lured her. As if anything in his face could captivate.

She looked up into his eyes again. Hers were dark, innocent and knowing, a mixture of vulnerable and experienced. Exactly what he needed. He could give himself up to this woman. She would know what to do, whatever she said. If she was confused and uncertain, it was nothing compared to him.

She leaned in – like he knew she would, because this was his theatre and he was the director – and she kissed him. It was dry and cool, and then not so dry. He strove to like it. This was his fantasy, his only refuge, he had to enjoy it. The alternative was playing out in slow-motion in the other car, while his gaze was lost in a sandy floor, resurfacing from near-unconsciousness to face a decision as big as Fate.

But there was still time. Still a moment when he could imagine, before the harshness of reality came crashing back.

So he let her kiss him. Let her hand trail down his waistcoat to the rough fabric of his clown pants. He pulled away – even in his mind he pulled away, not sure this was what he wanted. It was an imposed picture, like a double exposure where his layer of the photo almost didn't exist. _This is what you should want._ _This is what’s in store for you, what’s in your story. Open wide and swallow, boy_.

But what else did he have? He gave in again, let her worm a hand inside, let the cold air lick his skin, let her lead him to a seat, and let, and let, and let. His will a flimsy shred, the tatters of a burst balloon when you failed to twist it into the required shape. A dog, a giraffe, a throbbing cock. _Twist the balloon, damn you_. _How else will you entertain?_

She pushed him back against the seat and straddled him. He had seen it in porn so he knew it was possible. She lowered herself over him, wet and willing, and he was hard, he _was_ , if he could just will himself to be, to see this through. If he just closed his eyes and let himself shoot…

***

_Pow._

_Pow. Pow._

_Screams._

_Focus. Gather myself up, focus. Arm out straight, another_ pow _and then a trail of blood, and oh, the beauty of it, the ultimate, ultimate color._

_I’m on my feet, body moving of its own accord. No need to lead me, there’s something leading me inside. I know what to do. This train was a shortcut to clarity, a bishop’s move._

_A diagonal shortcut across the board._


	5. Results: Chessboard

_I pocket the gun. Well. That’s that, I guess._

_I don’t actually make the decision to run. My body makes it for me. It finds its feet and dashes up the stairs, a little wobbly from recent surprises, but fully functional. The city moves past me in a series of golden twilight shadows. Above me, there’s an endless expanse of blue, dotted by spangles of light. Again, that disoriented feeling. Is space up there? Or is it below me? Where am I?_

__Here _._

_I run past my dizziness and search for a hiding place, a place to breathe. There’s something there – a gleaming beacon of solitude, beckoning to me. I follow the siren song into the darkness. Filth and flickering light surround me. I’m warm, almost glowing: the residual heat of high speeds, of atmospheric friction. I hear my own breath, but louder than that, my pulse. The song of blood inside me._

_I lay my hands on the door, try to piece together a memory-image._

_Falling._

_That’s all I can remember now, as if the fall itself has wiped my memory. Darkness and falling. Blue, blue, everywhere, blue calling to me from down below, from the abyss. Danger, cool and still. Not the red-hot rage of my attackers, but the terrifying calm of the thing that knows the power it has over you. The might of the sea, almost banal in its immensity. A power that doesn’t even realize it can drown you._

_At once I feel it, and it’s as familiar as a recurring dream. There’s something –_ someone _– there. Deep, deep down, something is awake, gathering strength. It sucks at my stomach as viscerally as any fall. My mind song_ touches _someone. For a moment, there’s the weightlessness of disbelief. Then I take a step._

_step_

_step_

_step_

_step_

_Over the white to the dark to the white to the dark. Where is it? Where is that divine being who shares my past? How did I reach out to it in the middle of my fall?_

_More color. In waves, it emanates from somewhere within. Not quite blue, and not quite green. A jewel color without a name. The precious stone at the heart of the city, surrounded by a circlet of gold, the gold of dirty gas lamps. Something is changing. My mind screams: is it dying? I want to make a sound, but my throat is a wound. I remember asking as a child, what is the throat for? And the answer: that’s where you stick the knife._

_I want to. I want to do that. And the color that seeps through my consciousness is the reason, but I don’t know if it’s possible. Music hums in my bones, jarred into motion by my frantic sprint. If I take a look in the mirror, will I have turned this deep, greenish blue I’m imagining? Or am I making it all up?_

_I do make things up. I remember people telling me so. I remember the punishment for fantasy._

_As I move through the grimy porcelain chapel with my history sighing laments all around me, I feel the pain start to pulse again. The patches of fire on my skin where their boots wore me raw. The hatred they’ve marked me with. The rage that’s instilled in my cells._

_I thought I escaped it. I thought I was safe._

__You are _, comes the answer._ Just give in _._

 _I feel the color deepening, thickening. I want to disappear among the stars and only live in the music. So that’s what I do_. _I leave everything behind and plunge into the sea. I move from one world to another. As I sink towards the bottom, I see it. There’s a kind of greenish shine from far off, twinkling through the dusk. It beckons and beckons. It’s been beckoning for thousands of years, but no one has noticed the call. They don’t have the ears to hear it._

_As I near the heart of it, the greenish shimmer intensifies. I start swimming. Swirling currents cleave to my body, let me through. This is meant to be. I came here for this, and now that I’m here, it’s the only thing worth being here for._

_The only thing worth leaving for._

__


	6. Results: Tweedle twins

If it were you, would you not succumb too? Yes, pardon me for jumping the gun here, I know I should not insert my own opinions until the discussion, but come on. A lifetime of keeping your shadow at arm’s length, but in the end the shadow saves you? Who would not give in? If you never had a squire, and suddenly you do?

And so the game began – of hiding and ducking and weaving and peeking out, all the while wondering what it would be like to be caught. Safety behind bars, but wanting to be free. Out on the board of the city, so much he could do, but at such horrendous cost.

***

_I gaze at the darkling world, and a weight descends on me. Somehow, this is my fault. This darkness, this fizzled-out feeling of emptiness. I’ve disrupted the waves of this city. I’ve crashed through its atmosphere and pushed in where I don’t belong. Maybe I did belong once, but no more. I was born elsewhere, and my being here is destroying something._

_I’m outlawed everywhere._

_As I sit there, tasting the tobacco and the night air, I become aware of a disturbance. Approaching feet. I close my eyes briefly. They know. They’ve smelled the smoke of ruin and followed it here. They’ve felt the searing cut of wrongness, and they’re here to set it right._

_Their feet are angry, but they try to hide it. I know the sound only too well. Heart a-thunder behind my ribs, cigarette clutched in my hand, I steel myself. Their shadows jump and flutter across the parking lot, their faces echo with sharp sounds. Cavernous mouths open and close like the black holes I’ve dodged to come here. Piercing shrieks, rumbling grunts. All because of me. All because the rulers were right, and I have no place anywhere. I should be imprisoned, I should be cast out. I have no rights, because I’m wrong. And nowhere is this truer than here, outside a place of healing I should be able to call my home, but never will._

_They’ve found my mistakes. Splinters fly as they smash my lies. My hull is broken, nerves a-sizzle. Their bodies heave and puff like bellows, while I crouch motionless in the shadows, not a single wisp of hair swaying in the draft. Just keep calm. Their muted suspicion ripples over me like burning water. Their skin bristles with frustration. Waves of would-be violence crash against my shores, and I resist the urge to respond._

_They want to pull me out of hiding. They want to lay their hands on my skin. Everyone does._

_And despite myself, I shiver where I sit. There are tiny sounds of friction as my body moves against my clothes. They’ll hear. They’ll find me out. My fear will betray me to their murderous hate._

_But it never happens. Their ears don’t catch my fluttering heart, their skin doesn’t sense the vibrations in the air. They don’t even feel the tremors under their feet, the rumble of Fate. They don’t know that my coming is nothing compared to the ire of the city itself._


	7. Results: Egghead

These conversations were steered by him. Should I have told you that in the method section? I never posed a follow-up question, only listened. Some would say this made for an objective interview. Minimal input from the researcher, good girl. Just sit there, hewn in stone, and stare at the informant. Let them speak unencumbered, and the truth will come out.

Are you deranged? An interviewer who plays the mute, waiting for the subject to trip themselves up? (This one is for you, Crane) If that is your ideal, it can only mean you want their fear, the things they say to appease, to escape unscathed. You have no interest in truth. You just want proof of their weakness, their likeness to others. Scare someone and tell them to speak their innermost truth, what will happen? They will resort to the most common denominator. You will get the cultural blueprint for Acceptable. The truth will retreat from you like the smart little prey it is.

So no, I did not press the Acceptable out of him by staying "objective". I also did not push him into forced depictions with sleazy shock value. But I spoke in other ways. You forget our bond. He saw his words make a home in me, he saw acceptance and curiosity. I no longer need to speak. He knows. 

And when he had exhausted a subject – even though I wanted more, more, like how did you feel after the questioning, were you scared, did you call Hoyt – I said nothing. Because this is his story, and it is not my place to say what should be in it. He chose the highlights himself. Highlights that represent a state of mind, a category of events. If you want to know what it was like to kill his mother, this article will not describe it – unless you squint. Unless you realize that beneath each heading there is room for many things. The one quote I choose to stand for everything else – can it not be extrapolated to the unsaid?

Do I have to do all the work, or are you going to pitch in?

***

_The collision again: I can sense it, like an echo of his betrayal. I hear it crack like an egg, and it’s the signal to stop, but it takes me a while. There are strange vibrations in his head and his chest, or is it mine? We clashed. That’s what happened: like two falling stars in a deadly arc, we smashed into each other, and he was finally brought to a stop._

_Because I’m a fucking supernova._

_I don’t understand, not by myself. But as I slip in the blood and collapse against the wall, a kind of answer comes to me: we can always try. Even in the smoking rubble of everything, we can still reach for the stars. My mind is gone, my heart broken too many times to patch up. But there’s still him. Him and his outlawed feelings. There’s something there for me to learn, and something for him to teach. The teacher needs his pupil like the pupil needs his teacher. It’s just that we need to find a common language._

_And fuck… I think we found it._

_I can feel him pick up on my slightest twitch and tremor. It builds and builds until there’s a world of color that paints what I know and don’t know: that I can travel from this place to start anew, but what if I end up rebuilding the same ruins I left behind? Is my fate ingrained in my DNA from the start? Am I just a writhing string of adenine and cytosine, acting out a script that’s written by a mathematical law without consciousness or remorse?_

_My only way out is him. My white knight, the one who’s tried and tried and tried to break through the glass cage, bang bang bang, let me out, Arthur, I can do this, I can help, look look no hands!_

_“What the fuck, Arthur?”_

_I blink the brightness into focus. Who dares disturb my thoughts? There’s a warmth in my skin, a pleasurable prickling – this is what it should have been like in my head, with that woman. There’s life spreading like wildfire through goosebumps and stray hairs. I’ve never found myself much to look at, but fuck. Right now I’m a sleek and sweaty animal. I could drink blood._

_But the man who jarred me out of bliss won’t stop yammering. He wants out of here, okay, fine with me, I’m busy anyway. The last act is waiting for the star to make an entrance. The marionette and his master in beautiful synch. The final waltz, a masque of death so red it’ll make your head explode._

_And all the king’s horses can just fuck the fuck off._

__


	8. Results: Queen

_And so we come to the night at the opera._

_Tap, tap, tap goes the baton. Let the music begin. Softly, softly, don’t blow the crescendo too soon. A single string vibrates, the whisper of the inevitable. One voice, one lone voice that’s finding its timbre, its resonance chamber in the hearts of watchers everywhere. The softest sound will break into cacophony, but not yet, not yet. Even the first orchestra hit is just a tidbit, a brief little overture. Anticipation in aural form._

_I’m walked into the moment by rough hands that don’t touch me. I’ve set the score and the pace, and the musicians are gathering. From all corners, the sound billows and grows. Lights are winking, there’s color and sound_ finally _– this city is painted red, and none too soon. There’s smoke in frothy waves, flames that lick are liquid plasma. Chaos deals a lashing caress, a psychedelic dance is happening just outside my window. A merry-go-round for adults, a theme park with the theme of fucking fire._

_Something squeezes my chest. For a moment I worry, but then I feel the oxygen pour through my blood, and I’m reassured. My lungs know what to do. This element isn’t dangerous. As I bathe in the warm glow of my own amniotic fluid, the spasms are welcome. It’s the urge to laugh: a warbling, sunshine laugh that I’ve never felt rock my soul because I can’t, I can’t laugh._

_The realization is a visceral shock, a shattering of my world. Pieces of car window fly like sparks. I don’t have a seatbelt on, and I’m flung like a puppet, but that’s nothing to the rupture inside._

_I’ve never laughed in my life._

__

***

And so, in the end, he was born through shattered glass. You see? His path was laid out before him. His story was already written. He only had to board the train and follow the black and white tiles.

While splinters of truth burst to life on TV screens across the land, reverent hands laid the sleeping prince on a bed of shards: little glittering motes of crystallized tears against the blue. Because they were always the background.

***

__

_And this time when I step onto the podium, he’s standing behind me. Steering me. When I raise my arms, ready to morph from self-conscious nobody to benign dictator, he raises his arms under mine, or is it the other way round? I feel the steady warmth from his body as we spread our wings in a quarter past ten position. Symbolic? I don’t know. He’s the one in charge. His nose in the hair at the back of my neck, his chest touching my back, my arms resting on his, the cool edge of his baton supporting my fingers. The whisper of skin, of tiny hairs trembling against each other, igniting electricity… in a moment his hands will come down, forcing the orchestra to fall with him. But not yet. Not quite yet. This moment is for me to savor, to realize how fully I’m in his power._

_He’s leaving me a moment to grieve._

_I’m at the center of the universe, music in my ears, music that begins in my arms, my hands, an electrical storm emanating from our fingertips and crackling back at us, into our bones. The smell of him in my head, the tickling of his breath on my ear. We move as one. Bare skin brushes against bare skin, just hands, nothing perverted, but it makes my soul shiver. It has found a mate. Muscles tense for a leap into the unknown. We’re a beast of music, a big cat, savannah-prowling. I’m tied to his limbs with strings of stranded steel. The music swells and billows like a sail. Heat is generated in us, between us, in the air around us. The inevitable end pulls us both towards it, a waterfall of unknown depths, but the rapids are warm, so warm. There’s no fear, only the fear of not falling._

_I’m not alone._

__


	9. Discussion and conclusion

So let us now connect what he has told us with what we already know. This is where I draw the lines between past and present, the known and unknown. The jester archetype, the only one at the royal court allowed to tell the truth. I could talk about King Lear, or the circus, or why not Chaplin? The armor of laughter, the insidious truths it hides. The white makeup that softens a lupine face, makes it childish and vulnerable. Who would kill a clown? Look at his cute, stupid face. He does not know any better.

He knows better. He just does not care anymore.

But if the tweedle twins had done their research, would they not have discovered crimes worse than self-defense? Of course they would, but that is not the point. It never is. The point is that some have the prerogative to defend themselves, while others do not. A sniper taking someone out by mistake is forgiven, and the whole thing is covered up. They have a job to do, a mission from the rulers. A lone wolf does not. He speaks for himself, and when you are alone, that is the worst crime you can commit. Self-representation is a path to the gallows. Find a group to speak on your behalf, or you are dust on the wind. Even if the group is not really yours, pretend. Choose a congregation to shield you, no matter what secrets set you apart. Find a dogma you can swallow and keep your head down. Abide by rules you can abide. Succumb to a diagnosis, an identity penned by others, a downtrodden minority you can pass as, because your true, eclectic self follows no logic. It fits no room. The truth will not set you free, it will ostracize you. From those who have nothing and no one, we will take, and take, and take, and if you dare to object, we can point at the number one rule: can someone take your place at the stand? Does someone who matters want to bear witness?

No. So down you go.

But once down, there is no further to fall. Fallen angel, we like to say. Well, if you are fallen, the worst is already past. Why not make the most of it?

Yet I question who decides what is a fall and what is just a descent into the hero’s cave. Only the finale reveals. A villain redeemed is no longer a tragedy, but a tale of redemption. It all depends when your story ends. Just look at your most precious book of all: if the murderer crawls back on his knees and morphs into a kitten at the end, all remorse and withdrawn claws, does he not pass through the eye of the needle?

He does. There is a place of purity, a hellhole of healing, and he has been tiptoeing around it, burning it down, drawn again and again because there is just something there, something he needs and fears like nothing else. The pain can dread the cure, but something within him knows. The disobedient arm longs for restraints, for the long-sleeved shirt to hamper and soothe. But someone else has to make the decision for him. He cannot admit that this is what he wanted: a prison where he could finally be free. Perhaps that is why he is laughing.

Or was he just a part of the Red King’s dream?


End file.
